it’s a new lightweight browser built on top of the <a href=”http://www.mozilla.org/“>mozilla</a> platform but intended just as a simple web-browser. so no email client, javascript debugger, DOM inspector, or html editor.
the 0.4 release includes every mozilla feature that i’ve become reliant on like popup blocking, good cookie handling, tabbed browsing and type ahead find. and it’s so fast. on my machine it feels even faster than <a href=”http://galeon.sourceforge.net/“>galeon</a>, which is surprising since phoenix uses XUL for its interface rather than native GTK like galeon. XUL is basically just dhtml on steroids and was intended to be easy and flexible, but hasn’t previously been thought of as terribly efficient. that may all have to change.
phoenix development has reportedly slowed down after the 0.4 release. but that doesn’t seem like much of a problem when you consider that a very small team of netscape engineers went from <em>absolutely nothing</em> to IMO, the best web browser out there in just a couple weeks (the 0.1 release was september 23rd). that is unreal. there aren’t really any missing features. future development is apparently aimed at making it <em>even smaller and faster</em> and polishing the code up.
this really speaks volumes about the potential of mozilla and XUL as a cross-platform application development platform that’s just starting to be realized since mozilla stabilized after 1.0. i’ve been reading <a href=”http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mozilla/index.html”>Creating Applications with Mozilla</a> recently and i’m becoming more and more convinced that mozilla is nothing less than revolutionary. the skillset needed to develop reasonably sophisticated applications in mozilla isn’t much beyond what any skilled web designer who’s dabbled in javascript already has. mozilla isn’t competing with internet explorer anymore, it’s competing with Visual Basic as a rapid, easy development platform and it has the significant edge of being naturally cross-platform.
spent the weekend in virginia with lani, my sister, cj, and his roommates.
on friday night we drank. saturday i pretty much spent throwing up. after i’d spent enough time lying on the couch with my head under a blanket trying to stay perfectly still so my stomach would settle down, we watched Stephen King’s Rose Red, which was long but entertaining and then some episodes of the Young Ones.
sunday, lani and i managed to get corey to drive into DC and we showed her the über-vending machine. i’m sure that will be remembered as the highlight of her vacation. then we (me and corey) drove back up to new york.
[before you go poking around in the archives at hotendotey, be prepared to be offended. it’s funny stuff but not for those with weak stomachs. don’t say i didn’t warn you.]
i’ve mentioned before that the name ‘thraxil’ came out of some old sci-fi book on my parents’ bookshelf that i haven’t been able to track down since.
today i had a breakthrough.
my dad mailed me a bunch of books of fantasy art (including HR Giger, Rick Griffin, Moebius, Mouse + Kelly, and others). in the stack of books was “The Garden of Unearthly Delights: The Paintings of Josh Kirby.” in it i recognized a painting as the <a href=”http://pc1.klmsz.sulinet.hu/gabo/daw/DAW7/DW128_X.JPG”>cover of the book</a> from whence ‘thraxil’ came.
the book is called “<a href=”http://www.flyingturkeys.com/gsg/gsgbarrettneal.html”>Stress Pattern</a>” by <a href=”http://www.nealbarrett.com/news.asp”>Neal Barrett, Jr.</a> it was written in 1974 and seems to be well out of print now. i’ve found a few spots online that have used copies so i’ll probably pick one up just to have around. if anyone else is interested in the origins of the name, i recommend you do the same. i remember it being a fairly good book.
tried to give blood today, but they sent me away because my pulse was too high. i think i just have a higher metabolism than normal. any time anyone’s checked my pulse, it’s been really fast, my normal body temperature is closer to 99.5 than 98.6, and i seem to be able to eat huge amounts of food without gaining any weight.
<p>sister was down visiting for the weekend. we basically drank a lot of beer, watched some movies, and hung out. on saturday we went to a nice party at <a href="http://www.cynthialawson.com/">cynthia</a>’s apartment. on sunday we wandered around chinatown a bit.</p>
when i bought my desktop machine a little over 3 years ago, it came with an onboard yamaha soundcard that, at the time, didn’t have any linux support. for a couple months or so i just lived without sound.
by november or so of that year, i’d gotten pretty tired of not being able to listen to my mp3 collection. but, being an extremely poor student, i couldn’t exactly spend a lot of money on a new soundcard. i got about the cheapest one i could find, an ISA soundblaster 16, for about $12. all i had for speakers at that point were a couple little computer speakers so it really wasn’t that bad a setup. the card has served me faithfully ever since.
a year ago, when i moved into my apartment and actually had a bit of money to spare, i bought myself a very nice, high quality surround sound receiver and speaker system. so at this point, to listen to mp3s, i was taking the output of a headphone jack on a $12 sound card and running it into the input of a $600 receiver.
eventually i got a big hard-drive, ripped my entire CD collection, and filled the rest with music gotten from my <a href=”http://www.emusic.com/“>emusic.com</a> subscription. now i’d turned the computer into the centerpiece of my entertainment system. virtually all listening to music in my apartment was through the computer, and hence, through that $12 sound card and cheap 1/8” to RCA converter connecting it to the stereo.
last week i finally smartened up. started doing some research into cards with optical SPDIF outputs (since my receiver has an input) and eventually selected the <a href=”http://www.digit-life.com/articles/zoltrixpro6/“>Nightingale 6</a>. it was reasonably inexpensive, had optical SPDIF (without requiring a full drive bay like some of the creative labs cards), and advertised full linux support (this was confirmed on some linux mailing lists).
it came in the mail yesterday. installation was almost too easy. i stuck the card in, compiled the <a href=”http://www.alsa-project.org/“>ALSA</a> driver for it and it worked. well, the analog output worked immediately. i was unable to get the digital output working until i realized that that digital output channel was muted by default.
so now my setup is vastly improved. i’ve got a perfect, distortion free link straight from the media player on my computer to a high quality digital receiver. life is good.
last night, comedy central showed a movie called ‘Porn n Chicken’. quality-wise, it was about what you’d expect from “comedy central’s first feature-length film”.
but it was filmed at <a href=”http://www.columbia.edu/“>columbia</a>. living in new york, you get used to having to detour around film crews. at columbia, we probably get more than our fair share of filming (eg, parts of Spiderman were filmed here). but actually seeing this movie explains some of the stranger things we saw out our office window this summer. like two people wearing chicken masks and nothing else running back and forth on the south lawn with security chasing them.
the plot basically involves a bunch of students who decide to film their own ivy league porn movie. they film it in the library after hours and called it ‘the StaXXX’. i found this pretty amusing because my office is in the library. they have no idea…
<p>just four people playing in a small club, but they manage to sound as big as an orchestra. since their music ranges from industrial to goth to psychedelia to folk music, they tend to draw a diverse crowd. kids with tattoos, studded leather clothes, mohawks and excessive facial piercings came with their moms, who seemed just as excited about the show. </p>
<p>the opening act, Origami Galactica, was mediocre ambient stuff. pretty boring to watch. he almost redeemed himself at the end by taking a hacksaw to a bass guitar, but even that didn’t sound quite as interesting as you’d think.</p>
<p>i’m disappointed though that there really seems to be no other decent concerts coming to new york anytime soon (aside from avenue d shows, of course). there isn’t even anything good going on on halloween.</p>
